Balsamic roast chicken

Caramelized red onions make this especially tasty. Mashed potatoes and green beans in garlic vinaigrette were nice sides.

How many variations on Sunday roast chicken does one person need? I don't know, all of them? This is the third "new" version I've tried this year, and all have been quite tasty, reasonably different interpretations. And many thanks to our brother-in-law for the birds that were the basis for these recipes.

Balsamic roast chicken

From “The Sexy Forever Recipe Bible” by Suzanne Somers, who apparently actually can cook, unlike some celebrities with cookbooks they had tenuous connections with.

Ingredients:

1 large roasting chicken

2 red onions, sliced

2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

2 tablespoons sea salt

1 tablespoon freshly ground pepper

3 garlic cloves, minced

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

¼ cup red wine

Method:

Mix together rosemary, garlic, sea salt and pepper. (This might seem like a lot, but it’s really going to seem like not much once you start rubbing it over the bird.)

Pull out any chicken innards from the cavity; place innards in a roasting pan large enough to accommodate the bird. Cover innards with sliced onions. Rinse the chicken and pat dry. Rub rosemary mixture all over chicken. Let sit for at least an hour, or up to 24 hours ahead, covered, in the refrigerator to give the flavors time to sink in.

Pour vinegar and wine over chicken. Bake chicken at 350 for 1½ to 2 hours depending on size of the bird. (Figure 2 hours for a 5- to 6-pounder, less for a smaller bird.) Cut up chicken and serve with the onions, which are kind of like balsamic caramelized onions by this point.

Rating: Yet another tasty way to roast chicken. And those leftover red wine-vinegar-soaked onions are so going to get used in something else. Those are criminally good.

Followup: Those leftover onions were to die for on hamburgers.

Fennel and apple salad with cider vinaigrette

Fennel and apple salad with cider vinaigrette

From “The Flavors of Bon Appetit 2001”

Ingredients:

½ cup apple cider or juice

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 teaspoon honey

1 Granny Smith apple, thinly sliced

1 medium fennel bulb, thinly sliced

2 cups arugula

½ cup toasted pecans

Method:

Blend cider, olive oil, vinegar and honey in a bowl. Salt and pepper to taste. Toss apple, fennel and arugula in a serving bowl. Toss with vinaigrette. Sprinkle with pecans.

Rating: Surprisingly bland, given that it has fennel and the peppery arugula greens in it. Perhaps a shallot would help? 

Followup: I had the leftovers for supper augmented with some dried cranberries, shredded chicken and blue cheese to make it into a main course. That helped a bit. I'm still thinking shallots.

Green beans with garlic vinaigrette

Green beans with garlic vinaigrette

Adapted from “The Sexy Forever Recipe Bible” by Suzanne Somers. I don't usually go for celebrity cookbooks, but if you can get past her toothy smile plastered throughout the glam shots, the recipes themselves are actually toothsome.

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh green beans, ends snipped

1 garlic clove, crushed

Juice of 1 half lemon

2 tablespoons olive oil

Method:

Steam green beans until just tender, 3-4 minutes in a steamer bag, depending on your microwave. Meanwhile, mix garlic, lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste in a bowl. Whisk in olive oil. Toss cooked beans with vinaigrette.

Rating: Fast, easy, tasty

Tip: If you buy bags of beans that come pre-snipped in steamer bags, this is even easier.

Followup: I tried this same treatment with some broccoli I steamed for lunch. Also a winner.

Pasta with sausage, cream and Parmesan

The ingredients list sounds a bit like pasta carbonara only with sausage, but despite the cream and eggs, it’s not nearly as dense, with a much more sauce-like consistency instead of the sludge that carbonara sometimes becomes. This is one of those recipes where the quality of your Italian sausage makes an enormous difference. We were lucky enough to still have some from Hilltop Pastures in our freezer from the summer market.

Penne with Sausage and Parmesan

Adapted from “The Essential Pasta Cookbook,” a book packed with recipes and photos. I actually paid full pop for this one several years ago and haven’t been disappointed.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, sliced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 pound Italian sausage, cut into chunks

4 ounces mushrooms, sliced

½ cup white wine

1 cup cream

2 eggs

½ cup grated Parmesan, divided

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1 pound pasta, cooked (the original called for rigatoni, which might have been optimal, but we had penne on hand, and that worked fine, as would farfalle)

Method:

Saute onion in hot oil in sauce pan until softened. Add sausage and cook until nearly heated through. Add mushrooms and garlic and cook until mushrooms are softened. Stir in wine, raise heat and reduce liquid by half.

Mix together cream, eggs, half the Parmesan, parsley, salt and pepper to taste and stir in with the sausage mixture in the pan. Cook for a few minutes, then toss with cooked pasta and serve along with remaining Parmesan.

The original recipe claimed it serves 4, but this is a rare instance I disagree the other way; I would say it serves 6 respectably. Or as respectably as one can get with that much on the cholesterol and carb front.

Rating: With the right sausage, this is really quite nice for the occasional calorie splurge.

Oven stew

Oven stew

Adapted from “Casserole Crazy” by Emily Farris. The premise of this cookbook is all casseroles, all the time, divided by degree of how bad they are for you health-wise. It doesn’t give nutritional information, but really, if you can’t tell that a cream-laden dish falls into the not-so-good-for-you category, nutritional information is irrelevant. I was intrigued by the preparation method of this stew.

Ingredients:

2 pounds beef roast, cubed

6 medium potatoes, cubed (unpeeled)

1 large onion, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

2 parsnips, sliced

2 stalks celery, sliced

1 teaspoon chopped fresh cilantro

1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley

1 teaspoon each salt and pepper

1 16-ounce can pureed tomatoes

½ teaspoon sugar

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ cup water

Method:

Combine all ingredients in a 4-quart oven safe dish. (I used a 24-cm Le Creuset pot, which worked fine.) Bake, covered, for about 8 hours at 250 degrees.

Rating: Fairly fast fix in terms of prep time, but not as good as I had hoped. None of the rich broth I associate with a good stew. Fairly dry, despite the fact that I upped the liquid called for, and it’s relying on the tomato puree for its chief flavorant. I suppose one could try again and add red wine, thyme and other traditional stew flavorants. But the only reason to go this route is if you don’t own a crockpot, in which you can accomplish that same hands-off while at work cooking with vastly superior results when it comes to stew. (Like the beef stew in Lora Brody’s “Slow Cooker Cooking,” a really good reason to own a crockpot.)

Tip: When cutting up beef for any stew, aim to have chunks at least twice as large as what they sell in packages labeled as stew meat. You’ll have much more moist, flavorful beef instead of small hockey pucks of meat.